Vqadmin is simply a nice web based interface that will let us manage Vpopmail. Through the interface we can create new domains, new users, net quotas, enable services and much more.

So let's install it...

cd /downloads/qmailrocks

tar zxvf vqadmin-2.3.6.tar.gz

cd vqadmin-2.3.6

./configure --enable-cgibindir=/path/to/your/cgi-bin --enable-htmldir=/path/to/your/html/directory

(Example: ./configure --enable-cgibindir=/var/www/cgi-bin --enable-htmldir=/var/www/html )

make && make install-strip

If the installation is successfull, Vqadmin should install itself in the cgi-bin directory of your default website. Unless you tell it otherwise, that usually defaults to /var/www/cgi-bin. You can specify another location in the ./configure command above.

Now you will need to add the following to your server's Apache configuration file (usually httpd.conf)

<Directory "/path/to/your/cgi-bin/vqadmin">
deny from all
Options ExecCGI
AllowOverride AuthConfig
Order deny,allow
</Directory>

In addition, within the Apache master config file you will want to set the "AllowOveride" option to "All". Example: AllowOverride All

cd /path/to/your/cgi-bin/vqadmin

Now you will want to create a .htaccess file to password protect the Vqadmin interface. There should already be a .htaccess file in the vqadmin directory, so all you need to do is configure it. We'll use the ever useful vi editor for this.

vi .htaccess

AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /path/to/where/you/want/to/store/the/password/file/.htpasswd
AuthName vQadmin
require valid-user
satisfy any

chown apache .htaccess (you may need to change the chown to either "nobody", "apache" or "www" etc., depending on what user your installation of Apache is running as)

chmod 644 .htaccess

Now you need to create a corresponding .htpasswd file that's going to contain the username and encrypted password for the Vqadmin administrator...

htpasswd -bc /path/to/where/you/want/to/store/the/password/file/.htpasswd admin admin_password

chmod 644 /path/to/where/you/want/to/store/the/password/file/.htpasswd

Now restart Apache...

apachectl stop

apachectl start

If all has gone well, you should now be able to browse (in your web browser) to:
http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/vqadmin/vqadmin.cgi

Note: make sure you include "vqadmin.cgi" in the path or you will get a 403 forbidden error!

Enter the user "admin" and whatever password your assigned it.

You should now see the Vqadmin interface. Go ahead and add a new domain to your server! Pretty cool, huh? The "postmaster" user serves as the admin user for any new domain and we will use it to log into Qmailadmin, when we install that. As soon as we complete the install, that domain will be instantly able to get mail (assuming the MX is correctly pointing to your server). The nice thing about Vpopmail and Vqadmin is that you do not need to restart anything after you add a domain. Once you add it, it simply works! We're almost done!

Proceed to Part 7